I was recently talking with a colleague about a design element of the Sunday New York Times Magazine. I walked over to where we keep our periodicals, grabbed the magazine and flipped through it to find the weekly full-page Q&A, which was the feature I was referring to.
But then something strange happened. After about eight or 10 pages, I realized that all I was seeing were ads and articles about high-end wristwatches. I then turned to the cover and saw that it was not the weekly Times magazine, but a "SPECIAL ADVERTISING SUPPLEMENT" devoted to expensive watches. I then put the supplement aside, found the actual Sunday magazine and showed my colleague the page I had initially been trying to find.
That Times supplement is a very slick example of what many people in journalism call "advertorial.” The Times has produced this kind of material for years (and so have many other major publishers), but in my opinion, the Times’ labeling that it is not "real" editorial has become less and less clear and prominent, which is a troubling trend.
If the Times wants to print "advertorial," i.e., content provided by advertisers, that's fine and completely above board. However, when they do it they should go to great lengths to make sure readers know exactly what the content is and who produced it
The trend is now being extended more into the digital space — some call it "custom content" and others refer to it as "native advertising." Basically, almost no one clicks on traditional banner and display online ads anymore. The trend is so prevalent the industry calls it “banner blindness.” Therefore, advertisers need new ways to get users to learn about their products and services. Thus, things like "Sponsored Blog Posts" are popping up to entice users to click on them.
Dan Greenberg, CEO of Sharethrough, a prominent builder and distributor of native advertising, defines the termas "a form of media that’s built into the actual visual design and where the ads are part of the content." For example, create a supplement that looks like the New York Times Magazine, put it in the Sunday paper and hope that readers will be more prone to read it. (It certainly worked on me.)
The New York Times recently announced that it is launching a new website redesign in early January 2014, and according to Mashable.com, it "will include content sponsored by advertisers, a concept known as native advertising." It's a slippery slope that the Atlantic's website dangerously slid down early last year.
On Jan. 30, 2013, Adweek.com ran an article titled, "After Scientology Debacle, The Atlantic Tightens Native Ad Guidelines; Sponsored content will become more prominent on the site." The article went on to explain, "A little over two weeks after The Atlantic got egg on its face over a sponsored Web post by the Church of Scientology, the media brand has issued new guidelines for so-called native advertising. … The issue — according to the outraged digerati but also by the Atlantic's own admission — was that the Atlantic violated the spirit of native advertising by giving a platform to a controversial institution that didn’t jibe with its intellectual tradition. Then it made things worse by censoring some of the negative reaction that filled up the comments stream.” One can only hope that the Times was paying attention and won't make any of the same mistakes.
But when you're running content produced by someone else on your site, mistakes are very easy to make. Which is why the Federal Trade Commission updated its original 2000 guidelines in March of last year regarding these kinds of digital ads. Interestingly, a main focus of the FTC's new edict was the ever-increasing consumption of content on smaller and smaller devices.
In short, the smaller the screen, the harder it is to properly label where content is coming from. According to the FTC press release, "If a disclosure is needed to prevent an online ad claim from being deceptive or unfair, it must be clear and conspicuous. Under the new guidance, this means advertisers should ensure that the disclosure is clear and conspicuous on all devices and platforms that consumers may use to view the ad."
I know a lot of journalists who think this kind of content-rich advertising in general should be banned. They see it as deceptive and they also believe it encroaches on the integrity of their own work.
I couldn't disagree more. If you take that argument to its illogical conclusion, then why not ban advertising altogether? Advertisements are certainly a form of content in and of themselves and they almost always have an agenda — they just do it more concisely than the new native ad/custom content trend.
Personally, I think the FTC nails the issue with advice that this kind of content needs to be labeled clearly and conspicuously. If you tell consumers up front where the content on your site is coming from and who is responsible for creating it, then they can decide whether they want to read it or watch it. Today's consumers are very savvy when it comes to interpreting marketing messages. However, they have to know for sure what the source is before they click.
Native ads and custom sponsored content aren’t going anywhere. In fact, Peter Minnium, the head of brand initiatives at the Interactive Advertising Bureau, recently told the New York Post that, “Native advertising is going to fuel the growth of digital media….” If that’s the case, then publishers risk damaging the reputation of their own original editorial content if they don’t brand and label sponsored content extremely transparently. And rebuilding a professional reputation is much more difficult than building a piece of sponsored content.
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